The protests were an attempt to express the deep discontentment of the Ahwazi people with Iran’s occupying policies that intentionally target the environment and the water resources in Al-Ahwaz. The plans for stealing the water of the rivers and dehydrating the wetlands have resulted in severe damage and destruction of Ahwaz’s climate and the emergence of toxic dust storms.

The dust storms have been disturbing the lives of Ahwazi citizens and their persistence is triggering fatal respiratory disorders that more likely will develop into cancerous diseases.

Two weeks ago the dust storm caused thousands of Ahwazi citizens, especially the elderly and children, to enter hospitals and clinics after having suffered from suffocation and shortness of breath due to inhaling air containing a high quantity of dust particles.

Dust storms have hit Ahwaz for several days, but the local officials proved to be irresponsible. They have taken no action to avert this environmental disaster that threatens human life and the habitat, putting at risk all the persons, animals and plants that live on the land of Al-Ahwaz. The extent of the storms has also been so severe that public and private institutions, such as schools and banks, have been undertaken a policy of temporary closure during the emergency.

The reason for the emergence of these toxic dust storms is the unnatural and extensive drying of the rivers and the marshes, as well as the ongoing construction of dams on the rivers of Ahwaz.

Additionally, there is the policy of diverting of the water of the Karoon and Karkheh Rivers to Iranian territories in order to revive the agriculture sector of the Persian provinces, particularly Isfahan and Semnan, and to supply some other Persian cities with the water; a policy that has been undertaken by the successive Iranian central governments.

According to Ahwazi human rights activists, the joint Iranian-Chinese oil prospecting activities in Ahwazi cities such as Al-Howeyzeh, Albseytin have severely polluted the land, the water of the rivers and the ecology of these regions.

Pollution has been further exasperated by the fact that the prospecting oil plans have been conducted with the use of internationally prohibited and severely detrimental toxic materials.

As a result of this flagrant abuse of the environment of Al-Ahwaz, medical examinations of Ahwazi citizens undertaken after the downpour of acid toxic rain in Ahwaz revealed high incidence of toxic poisonings due to the toxic materials used in oil prospecting.

While the Iranian occupying central government continues plundering the natural resources of Al-Ahwaz, it is still employing demagogic propaganda and publicizing misleading facts where they claim that the sand storms which are plaguing the Ahwazi regions have an external origin and for this they are blaming the neighboring countries.

The Ahwazi Arab inhabitants who are living next to marshes and wetlands such as Hor-Al-Azim (which has been dried up by the Iranian oil companies) have repeatedly released films and videos that clearly show the horrific rise of sand storms from the dried wetlands.

The film below was made at the dried wetland of Hor-Al-Azim. It is compelling evidence corroborating that the source of such destructive sand storms is internal and it is the product of the colonial projects of the Occupation state of Iran.

The dust storms have caused death in other ways. They are so thick and visibility is reduced to only 5 meters, bringing about prohibitive road conditions. A tragic car accident took place on the highway between Ahwaz and Toster City involving a truck and five cars. At least twelve persons were killed in this collision, with dozens of others injured on the highway due to visibility accidents.

In recent days, the Ahwazi Arab people who have had enough of Iranian oppression, have been participating in protests in all the Ahwazi cities. They are denouncing the policy of the Iranian authorities in drying up the Ahwazi wetlands and marshes and they claim that the area of this devastation exceeds more than one and a half million hectares.

The desertification and dryness of such a vast area has led to the emergence of the deadly sandstorms that have claimed the lives of hundreds of Ahwazi Arab people. The Iranian authorities have not so far released transparent statistics with the number of deaths and people with respiratory disease and renal cancer in Al-Ahwaz. Such dust storms have been adopted as a deadly weapon for massacring the entire Ahwazi Arab people.